2 of 2

"They shut Kids Quest down at 11 p.m., and they're still paging for parents at 3, 4, 6 a.m.," says Gulfport Police Chief George Payne, Jr.

With a dozen casinos along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, some analysts tout the region as "the next Las Vegas." Mississippi's gambling laws set no limits on individual bets.

Since casinos opened in 1992, more jobs and greater tax revenues have boosted state support for schools and infrastructure needs.

"Four years ago, the city of Biloxi was fixing to file bankruptcy," Payne says. "Now, they've got $12 million to $14 million they don't know how to spend."

But Gulf Coast residents are only beginning to learn the costs: across-the-board increases in crime, a surge in domestic disputes and suicide attempts, plus a heavier demand for help from churches and social-service agencies. There are graver problems.

"Our economics, our education, is dependent upon the exploitation of the weakness of our community rather than the strengths," says David Kniss, pastor of Gulfhaven Mennonite Church.

Supporting conclusions are reached in Goodman's "The Luck Business: The Devastating Consequences and Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion" (Free Press, 1995):

- Gambling siphons away local consumer dollars from other businesses.

- Sixty percent of pathological gamblers engage in crime to promote their habit, while 40 percent of all white-collar crime has its roots in gambling.

- People in the lowest income brackets spend four times as much of their income on gambling as those in the highest.

THE CHURCH'S STRATEGY: The question of ministry to these new "tax collectors" dominated a January gathering in Gulfport organized by the Elkhart, Indiana-based Mennonite Board of Missions.

"The casinos are here now, there's nothing we can do about that," said John Landrum, a Baptist pastor who fought gambling's 1992 intrusion into Gulfport. "So, let's do all we can to minister."

Repeatedly, the image of Jesus, "the friend of tax collectors and sinners," entered the discussion. "It is sometimes too easy for us to distance ourselves from those people we categorize as sinners," said conference participant Mark Thiessen Nation.

Grey foresees a battle against superior numbers on two fronts: the fight to prevent gambling's proliferation and the response to its social costs.

"If we lose, it is only because people did not join us in this fight," Grey says. "If Christians choose not to get in the good fight, the casinos with their money and muscle will outlast us."

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

April 8 1996, Vol. 40, No. 4